27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays by Tennessee Williams Page A
Authors: Tennessee Williams
Ads: Link
let the Indian women tread the earth in the dance that destroys the locust!
( The three white-robed women rise from their bench and move in front. They perform a slow, angular dance to drums and guitar. Their movements slow. The music softens. The dance and the music become a reticent background for the speech. )
R ANCHER:
Elena had fled through the door as the storm broke on us.
She had fled through the open door, out over the fields
darkening down the valley where rain was advancing its tall silent squadrons of silver.
Her figure was lost in a sudden convulsion of shadows heaved by the eucalyptus.
( The dancers raise their arms. )
The rain came down as sound of rapturous trumpets rolled over the earth,
and still
the delicate warmthless yellow
of late afternoon persisted
behind
that transparent curtain of silver.
At once the clouds
had changed their weight into motion,
their inkiness thinned, their cumulous forms rose higher, their edges were stirred as radiant feathers, upwards, above the mountains.
( Distant choral singing. Wordless. “La Golondrina” is woven into the music. )
R ANCHER:
A treble choir now sang in the eucalyptus, an Angelus rang!
( Bells )
The whole wide vault of the valley, the sweep of the plain assumed a curious lightness under the rain.
The birds already, the swallows,
before the rainstorm ceased,
had begun to climb the atmosphere’s clean spirals.
Ethereal wine
intoxicated these tipplers,
their notes were wild and prodigal as fool’s silver.
The moon, unshining, blank, bone-like, stood over the Lobos mountains and grinned and grinned like a speechless idiot where the cloud-mass thinned . . .
I saw her once more—briefly, running along by the fence at the end of the meadow.
The long and tremendous song of the eucalyptus described this flight:
the shoulders inclined stiffly forward,
the arms flung out, throat arched,
more as though drunk with a kind of heroic abandon—than blinded—by fright.
( He covers his face. )
Forgive me . . .
( The cloud that darkened the sun passes over. The stream of fierce sunlight returns through the door and the windows. The women return to the bench. )
S CENE III
( The Judge pours water from a gourd to wet his handkerchief and wipes his forehead. )
T HE J UDGE:
The clouds have cheated again—and crossed away.
Our friend the sun comes back like an enemy now.
We want the rain—the coolness—the shade . . .
It is not given us yet.
T HE W OMEN: ( softly chanting )
Rojo — rojo
Rojo de sangre es el sol.
T HE J UDGE:
It is the lack of what he desires most keenly that twists a man out of nature.
When you were a boy, my friend from Casa Rojo, you were gentle—withdrew too much from the world.
This reticence, almost noble, persisted through youth,
but later, as you grew older,
an emptiness, still unfilled, became a cellar,
a cellar into which blackness dripped and trickled,
a slow, corrosive seepage.
Then the reticence was no longer noble—but locked—resentful, and breeding a need for destruction.
What was clear?
R ANCHER: Nothing was clear.
T HE J UDGE: What was straight?
R ANCHER: Nothing was straight.
T HE J UDGE: How did the light come through?
R ANCHER: Through the crookedest entrance, the narrowest area-way!
T HE J UDGE: And where you walked—what was it you walked among?
R ANCHER: A pile of my own dead bones—like discarded lumber.
T HE J UDGE: The day was still.
R ANCHER: Oppressively still.
T HE J UDGE:
Noon—breathless. The sky was vacant.
White—plague-like—exhausted.
R ANCHER:
Once it disgorged a turbulent swarm of locusts.
Heat made wave-like motions over the terrible desert statement of distance.
Giants came down, invisibly, pounding huge—huge—drums!
T HE W OMEN: ( softly )
Rojo — rojo
rojo de sangre es el sol!
( A low drumming )
R ANCHER:
Drummers!
Drummers!
Go back under my skull.
There is a time for nightmare’s reality later!
Ahhh—ahhh—with
( The three white-robed women rise from their bench and move in front. They perform a slow, angular dance to drums and guitar. Their movements slow. The music softens. The dance and the music become a reticent background for the speech. )
R ANCHER:
Elena had fled through the door as the storm broke on us.
She had fled through the open door, out over the fields
darkening down the valley where rain was advancing its tall silent squadrons of silver.
Her figure was lost in a sudden convulsion of shadows heaved by the eucalyptus.
( The dancers raise their arms. )
The rain came down as sound of rapturous trumpets rolled over the earth,
and still
the delicate warmthless yellow
of late afternoon persisted
behind
that transparent curtain of silver.
At once the clouds
had changed their weight into motion,
their inkiness thinned, their cumulous forms rose higher, their edges were stirred as radiant feathers, upwards, above the mountains.
( Distant choral singing. Wordless. “La Golondrina” is woven into the music. )
R ANCHER:
A treble choir now sang in the eucalyptus, an Angelus rang!
( Bells )
The whole wide vault of the valley, the sweep of the plain assumed a curious lightness under the rain.
The birds already, the swallows,
before the rainstorm ceased,
had begun to climb the atmosphere’s clean spirals.
Ethereal wine
intoxicated these tipplers,
their notes were wild and prodigal as fool’s silver.
The moon, unshining, blank, bone-like, stood over the Lobos mountains and grinned and grinned like a speechless idiot where the cloud-mass thinned . . .
I saw her once more—briefly, running along by the fence at the end of the meadow.
The long and tremendous song of the eucalyptus described this flight:
the shoulders inclined stiffly forward,
the arms flung out, throat arched,
more as though drunk with a kind of heroic abandon—than blinded—by fright.
( He covers his face. )
Forgive me . . .
( The cloud that darkened the sun passes over. The stream of fierce sunlight returns through the door and the windows. The women return to the bench. )
S CENE III
( The Judge pours water from a gourd to wet his handkerchief and wipes his forehead. )
T HE J UDGE:
The clouds have cheated again—and crossed away.
Our friend the sun comes back like an enemy now.
We want the rain—the coolness—the shade . . .
It is not given us yet.
T HE W OMEN: ( softly chanting )
Rojo — rojo
Rojo de sangre es el sol.
T HE J UDGE:
It is the lack of what he desires most keenly that twists a man out of nature.
When you were a boy, my friend from Casa Rojo, you were gentle—withdrew too much from the world.
This reticence, almost noble, persisted through youth,
but later, as you grew older,
an emptiness, still unfilled, became a cellar,
a cellar into which blackness dripped and trickled,
a slow, corrosive seepage.
Then the reticence was no longer noble—but locked—resentful, and breeding a need for destruction.
What was clear?
R ANCHER: Nothing was clear.
T HE J UDGE: What was straight?
R ANCHER: Nothing was straight.
T HE J UDGE: How did the light come through?
R ANCHER: Through the crookedest entrance, the narrowest area-way!
T HE J UDGE: And where you walked—what was it you walked among?
R ANCHER: A pile of my own dead bones—like discarded lumber.
T HE J UDGE: The day was still.
R ANCHER: Oppressively still.
T HE J UDGE:
Noon—breathless. The sky was vacant.
White—plague-like—exhausted.
R ANCHER:
Once it disgorged a turbulent swarm of locusts.
Heat made wave-like motions over the terrible desert statement of distance.
Giants came down, invisibly, pounding huge—huge—drums!
T HE W OMEN: ( softly )
Rojo — rojo
rojo de sangre es el sol!
( A low drumming )
R ANCHER:
Drummers!
Drummers!
Go back under my skull.
There is a time for nightmare’s reality later!
Ahhh—ahhh—with
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